


Telltale Heart

by Astroboots



Category: Triple Frontier (2019)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Married Couple, NSFW, Oral Sex, Shameless Smut, Vaginal Sex, francisco morales/you, frankie morales, frankie morales/you - Freeform, pedro pascal/you - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:15:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29976543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astroboots/pseuds/Astroboots
Summary: It’s what always happens in the movies; the man grovels, the woman forgives. There’s a passionate kiss; all is well, cue the credits with a heart swelling cinematic score. But somehow you're unable to forgive him.
Relationships: Francisco "Catfish" Morales & Reader, Francisco "Catfish" Morales/You
Comments: 10
Kudos: 12





	1. A year

_**Maybe the right decision would have been a divorce.** _

On paper, only a madwoman would have stayed. The man failed a standard drug test at work for cocaine and lost his pilot licence. Then still under suspension, he’d left the country for a month-long stint (promising it’d only be a week). Leaving you and your new baby at home. Leaving you to wonder if this meant you would have to carry on as a single mother from then on. 

When he finally returned, it was with $17,000 deposited in your joint bank account and a haunted look in his eyes, attached to a poorly made up lie.

And as you were contemplating whether to stay and forgive; or leave and resent him forever, your family and friends all told you that: ‘ _sometimes good people make bad decisions. They fuck up, but it doesn’t mean they’re bad. Just human, capable of making mistakes.’_

You must be insane, because despite everything, you stayed. Despite everything, you still think of Frankie as a good man. A good husband, and a good father to your daughter.

He’s the kind of husband who would drive out to the Waffle House at 2am on a workday because his pregnant wife couldn’t sleep and had food cravings. Staying up next to you, even as he had work early in the morning, watching you devour the greasy waffles in bed with the extra maple syrup he got for you. Patiently listening to your rants on Law and Order inconsistencies as it played in the background. Frankie would chuckle quietly, a hand resting on your thigh, thumb idly stroking the inside of your knee, responding in soft murmurs, as he rested his head on the side of your hip with a sleepy smile that even after a full on decade always made your chest swell overwhelmingly lush, every single time.

He’s the kind of father that nearly broke the baby crib, because he couldn’t bear the sound of his daughter crying and climbed inside to sleep with her. That’s where you’d found them the next morning, his long legs comically hanging over the ledge, with Carmentéa snuggled peacefully against his chest. You lingered so long that morning you ended up late for work, unable to drag yourself away, wanting to etch that stolen moment into your brain with permanent ink, forever visible behind your eyelids. That very same image came back to haunt you whenever you imagined what life would be like for Carmentéa and you, without Frankie, and you realized you couldn’t ever let go.

You forgave, deciding that his mistakes did not erase all the things he had done right in the decades prior. Or rather, you tried to forgive but forgiveness wouldn’t come and you didn’t understand why.

It’s what always happens in the movies; the man grovels, the woman forgives. There’s a passionate kiss; all is well, cue the credits with a heart swelling cinematic score. Instead, you ended up in what was the lowest rung of hell for the both of you. Where you live under the same house, and barely talk to each other; be in the same room but avoid eye contact. One of you will enter a room and round the furniture so you don’t accidentally brush up against each other.

Sex is sparse, sometimes months in between. Maybe it’s the lack of practice but the sex between you now reads like a joke about two mormons who have never experienced sexual intimacy until their wedding night. You’d been the one to initiate it last time, and the time before that. Frankie never asks anymore, _for anything._

This time it’s hurried and awkward, heavy limbs uncomfortably jabbing into your ribs as he tries to sheathe himself into you. It’s pairing Legos with Mega Blocks that you hoped would fit, but somehow _don’t_ **.** Mercifully, the sound of Carmentéa crying is picked up by the baby monitor, and Frankie drags himself away from you with a regretful murmur, hastily dressing as he heads towards the nursery, but you had already felt him softening inside of you before that.

As you reach for the nightlight on your side of the bed, Frankie is back in the room and clears his throat as if to warn you he is going to break the neverending silence that you’ve both grown accustomed to.

“Anniversary is coming up next month, I was thinking we could go somewhere nice?”

Turning in the bed, you see the warmth of the nightlight behind him casting a dim glow over his dark hair that’s always at least a little bit rumpled. It’s slightly overgrown now to the point where it is curling at the edges of his ears, and there’s a feeling you can’t identify that sits achingly heavy on your chest, until you recognize it as a memory of a feeling you can’t get back. The tender joy you used to get when he’d press his ear firmly to your collarbone and you’d trail your fingertips through his messy curls until his eyes fluttered close with a contented sigh against your skin.

“Is that ok?”. There’s hesitation etched in the frown of his brow, and you realize that you still haven’t said yes. How odd is it that things have come to this, that he seems genuinely unsure what your answer would be.

“Yes, of course.”

There’s a small tug on the corner of his lips, that doesn’t quite qualify as a smile, and you are scrambling for something coherent to say, a polite phrase to show him you appreciate the effort but come up short. Then it’s taken so long that the moment is gone and there’s no point anymore. He reaches for the light on his side, turning it off, leaving you both in the darkness together. _But apart._

It’s almost been a year since you made your decision to stay. You had never thought then, there would be an outcome where after this long, hide it as you might, forcibly pushing it down to squash it, resentment would still be there; persistently knocking on the door everyday to remind you that no matter how you tried you’re not ready to forgive him.

Maybe, you think to yourself as you drift to sleep, staying was the wrong decision for both of you.


	2. Summer

After Tom’s death, Molly had wanted to reinstate the traditional Saturday BBQ in an attempt to establish some semblance of normalcy. At first, the good old gang used to gather dutifully at 12 noon sharp every weekend without fail. But a year later, the tradition was already on its last legs. Blame it on how someone's absence can somehow feel more present than those who were already gathered. At 6 feet 3, barrelling shoulders and a booming voice, it’s a physical presence that cannot be ignored and his absence even more so, to the point where it’s hard to even mention Tom’s name.

Santi came home for a hot minute before he shot off again, _always restless,_ always looking for the next big thing. Last you heard he was back in Columbia for the second time this year, but when you’d asked Frankie why, his back had twisted into one anxious, gnarly knot telling you, _he just didn't want to get involved with it this time._

Will would come every now and then, but you could tell he would find any sorry excuse not to show up, or to try to leave early. His eyes would always drag back to the garage, the space Tom had been confined to after the divorce. It unnerved Will to be here. To be reminded of what was lost.

Benny was about the only regular feature on these afternoons. Always the first to arrive and always the last to leave, from helping Molly set up the grill despite her insistence that the damned thing had wheels and she could roll it out herself — to putting away the last glass in her cupboard after the dishwasher was done with the cycle, because Benny always insisted his momma didn’t raise a chump.

Sometimes when you come over just to visit Molly, Benny is already there to help her fix a flickering light that she wasn’t even aware was broken until he mentioned it. More often than not, he breaks more things than he fixed. But Molly enjoys the company and she never has the heart to shoo him away.

Where life and kids didn’t get in the way, you and Frankie would always try to come, neither of you could stand the thought that she had to maintain this tradition alone.

The Davis residence is a beautiful suburban home. White house, with lots of space for Molly’s two gigantic golden retrievers now that Tess had gone off to college. It was nothing ostentatious, just homely. A big space in the garden that was rarely used. An old disused treehouse that Frankie had helped Tom build for Tess so she could hold her imaginary tea parties up there once upon a very long time ago.

As Frankie pulls up to Molly’s driveway, you spot Benny’s old Chevrolet already parked in the driveway. Molly is sitting on the porch in her old fashioned swing bench, sipping on a cold bottle of beer, drinking in the last of the Saturday afternoon sun.

Despite his car being parked, you can’t see any trace of Benny.

“He’s in the garage,” Molly explains, “The brake discs of my car wore out and he insisted he’d fix it instead of letting me take it to the garage.”

A grimace contorts Frankie’s face. “He doesn’t know the first thing about fixing cars.” Then he turns to you. “I’ll go check and see how bad it is so he doesn’t do any serious damage”

You give him a nod as you watch him go, eyes lingering on the sway of his hips and the strong line of his back as he does.

“Frankie’s looking like a snack and a half today.” Molly tells you, offering you a beer with an outreached hand and you sit down on the swing porch next to her. “You, too, by the way,” she adds, gesturing vaguely, “but that’s already a given.”

One beer turns to two, when Frankie comes out to tell the two of you that _the idiot_ has managed to cut the brake fluid tube to the brakes and now he needs to replace _the whole thing_ and also there’s brake fluid that’s leaked _everywher_ e. He comes back out minutes later having gathered an armful of towels from the kitchen to _try to fix the mess the dumbass made_.

He says try, but your Pavlovian response is to give him the fond praise that _you know he’ll succeed._ You catch yourself and hold it back on the tip of your tongue without saying it. As he walks away, the guilt of your pettiness, that you can’t even give your husband small praise, when you know how much it would mean to him; how he lights up at it, makes you hate yourself and your limited capacity to forgive.

Molly regales you with the latest string of horrors that is dating in your 40s on Tinder; the English professor who brought his wife with him; the 18 year old trying to pass for a sophisticated 25 but then got ID’d when ordering wine to their table; the man who nearly gave her arthritis from how hard she had to jack him off but he still couldn’t get it decently hard. It has you bent over with laughter in the stale summer air.

The boys are fixing the car, and even from where you’re sitting, you can see that Benny is grabbing the wrong tool. Frankie had asked for a socket wrench and Benny is handing him a standard wrench, and you see Frankie duck his head out from under the car, curls glued to his forehead with a streak of oil that glistens in the sun. He can’t help himself but to poke fun of Benny in a brotherly fashion, with fast-spoken Spanish that the younger man wouldn't be able to catch. You start sputtering laughter against the rim of the beer bottle when you hear Benny retort that _he knows_ _what Pendejo means,_ trying to kick out the wheel cart Frankie’s lying on.

In fairness to Benny, both tools contain the word ‘ _wrench_ ’ in it.

It has you nostalgic over the number of lazy Saturdays you’ve spent just like this, because Molly’s old piece of junk of a car is way past its prime since the day you first met her almost a decade ago. It amazes you that this woman never just gets rid of it, especially when she can afford to do so now.

It’s easy enough to pretend, Benny is the same height as Tom, but leaner, and if you squint hard enough and ignore that Benny is far easier on the eyes, it almost feels the same. And Frankie… it doesn’t take much at all whenever you look at Frankie for too long - the old feelings that he used to inspire, the bright sparks in your stomach that quickly bubble up if you don’t slam a lid on them.

So if you don’t think too hard about it, from a safe distance, you can almost pretend, everything’s fine and the way it used to be.

“How’re things going with you two?” Molly asks.

“It’s fine.” It’s a non-committal answer but you never did know how to answer this beyond, _it’s fine._

“12 months clean is a big step.” Molly tells you “He got his licence back. He’s going to therapy. These are all good things.”

You don’t know why she’s saying this as if she’s trying to convince you of something you don’t already know.

“How’s the sex,” she asks, leaning over conspiratorially, “is it still terrible?”

“What are you, our couple therapist now?”

“I might as well be.”

Hunching your shoulder into yourself, you refrain from scowling so that Molly doesn’t start about how you’ll get wrinkles if you keep doing that. _You fucking hate this topic_. Who wouldn’t? Molly is the only person you know who takes morbidly comical pleasure in telling people her sex life is in shambles. But it’s only fair you share when she shares everything with you.

“I’ve sort of given up on sex. I don’t want to force the issue anymore.”

Molly looks up at you with confusion in her perfectly arched brow. “What do you mean?”

“Every single time, I’m the one asking for sex. He’s never asked me. He doesn’t touch me. I’ve become a leper to him and everytime I initiate it, it somehow ends up even worse than the last time before it and then I feel responsible for how bad it is because it’s like I’m cornering him into it.”

Her hand comes to rest on your shoulder with a sympathetic squeeze, “For what it’s worth, I don’t think he’s forcing himself to have sex with you.”

She gestures her bottle towards the car. “Look at the poor man, he looks so pent up I bet he’d explode like the inside of a pinata if you so much as brushed up against those tight fitted jeans right now.”

Looking up, your eyes are drawn to the end of Molly’s beer bottle where it is accusingly aimed at Frankie standing over the open hood of the car. Brown eyes meet yours, seemingly by coincidence, until you realize that the reason they do is because he’s been looking at you before this. How long you don’t know. But from the way his eyes flicker away, quickly drawing his cap down his overgrown fringe, head hanging down as if his feet had suddenly become a thing of wondrous interest, it must have been more than just a momentary glance.

“See it from his perspective, he knows he screwed up. It’s safer to wait for you to initiate. The man is probably terrified to ask you for much of anything, what if you get angry and kick him to the curb - and then he’ll never see his daughter again.”

You drag your eyes away from the sturdy outline of Frankie’s shoulders, bent over the hood, to look at Molly instead. “I would never take his daughter away from him. He’s a good dad. I’d be hurting Carmentéa more than him.”

“I know that, but _he_ doesn’t.”

Leaning back against the bench, you push out the swing with your feet as a parched breeze tickles your ear. It’s something that you often think of. You wonder if he still loves you, _still wants you,_ why he would even want to stay considering how miserable he seems, and then you remember that he’s probably not staying for you. He’s staying for your daughter. To him, you might as well be a stranger living in the same house as him, only bound together by the dual obligation of your daughter.

“Do you think he’s only staying with me for Carmentéa?”

Molly lets out a long weary sigh, “Frankie is a stubborn, strong willed man. He’s no pushover just because he’s the quiet one. Tom always used to say he was the one person in the team that couldn’t be forced to do much of anything against his will unless lives were at stake. If he didn’t love you, not even the love for his daughter would make him stay with you.”

There’s a brief silence as she observes you, taking a sip of her beer. “What about you? Are you staying only because of Carmentéa?”

Biting your lip, you cross your arms around your torso, because you don’t know how to answer that, and so you don’t.

 _“_ Do you still _love_ him?” Molly presses.

You don’t answer that one, even if you know how to, because it’s an answer you don’t want to admit to yourself. Don’t even want to name it, but you know it’s still there, you just don’t know where to put it anymore.

“You know you’re being really unfair right? You want him to love you, but you want to not have to love him back at the same time.”

Bringing the bottle to your lips, the beer tastes sweet and sticky from the summer heat. You know Molly’s right. You are being unfair, not much better than a sullen child, so you simply nod and say, _I know_.

“A year seems like a long time to me to freeze someone out this way. If you’re that upset, why are you even still together? Either forgive him… or don’t. But neither of you can keep living in limbo like this. If you don’t want to forgive him, rip off the bandaid and just get a divorce, then you can both move on with your lives with other people.”

You put down the empty beer bottle on the deck, together with the rest, the green glass refracting the sun with a blunt glare in your eyes. You have already forgiven him, _you think_. But it sneaks up on you, the anger. In the beginning it was relentless, wave after wave. Sometimes it’s gentle tides, other times a tsunami of hurt and anger washing over you until it holds you underwater, filling your lungs with spite and helplessness.

Sometimes it will go days and weeks without it ever rearing its ugly head and those long gaps are getting longer and more frequent. It’s just not completely gone, the way you want it to be.

“I just need a bit more time.”

“Time to forgive him or time to decide whether you want to stay in this?” Molly pries.

“We’ve been together for almost half my life. We have a daughter together, and a way too expensive mortgage on a house I want Carmentéa to grow up in. It’s impossible to just walk away from all of that, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Honey, if those are the only reason you’re staying, then I don’t think you should. All those reasons you mentioned, are not real reasons to stay with someone. Don’t stay because you have to, stay because _you want to._ ”

Molly kicks up her feet on the seat, eyes scrutinizing. “Do you want to?”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” Hearing it, as it comes out, you sound more defensive than you had intended.

She gives you a disappointed look that tells you it’s a cop-out answer, _and you know it too._

“Trust me, it’s not impossible. I did it, remember?”

It’s a sentence that sucks out all the air with it. All the fight in you deflates when you see the wry smile and the deprecating shrug of her shoulder. You know the guilt that haunts her, how this woman wonders if there was anything that she could’ve done that would’ve prevented the inevitable. The early nights where she would call you at 2am crying, convinced that _if only_ they had still been married, if she’d still had a say as his wife instead of a nagging ex, that would have made him stay for her. _If only_ she had still been with him, maybe he would have no reason to go at all; no reason to impress her, or chase for money and validity. _If only_ there’d be no reason for him to prove himself to their daughter that he was still a man capable of work and value.

 _If only_ is a ghost that lingers in the shape of 6 feet 3 in every corner of their marital house that she was never able to let go of and sell after he was no longer there. She’ll never be able to escape from it. A soldier’s widow even if he didn’t die in active duty.

“Does put things in perspective though, doesn’t it? You think they’re always going to be there. In all their annoying glory. Then they’re not and all of a sudden you think, did it really matter that he never took out the trash and always left the toilet seat up?”

Wrapping your arms around Molly from behind, you rest your chin on her strong, proud shoulder that never sags. There’s a chuckle from her that tells you, _you’re being silly for worrying_ , and she assures you that she’s fine— _no really, she really is_ , but you can feel the unsteady tremble that betrays her in her hand.

Both of you know she’s not fine. Nobody is these days.


	3. Autumn

It rains all of Sunday night. Not a shy light rain, or a pitter patter, but a proper downpour of a monsoon rain, and the sound of it drives him insane.

Everytime it starts pouring rain outside, Frankie can practically feel the weight of clammy clothing clinging to him like a second layer of uncomfortable skin. The jarring coldness that burrows into the marrow, eating into him. It’s unsettling and he swears he can physically feel the steady slither of anxiety underneath his skin that makes him want to dig his fingernails into his arm, rip it out and crawl out of himself.

It’s his household task to take out the dog in the morning, and he can already hear Duchess’ paws scratching; nose sniffing through the gap of the bedroom door with a whine.

Heaving himself out of bed as quietly as he can, so as not to wake you, he makes his way downstairs as he pulls on his boots. Logically, he knows it’s only in his imagination, because his boots are kept dry inside, but he can hear the squelching sound of water against his socks, toes curling in disgust as he stands in front of the door and hesitates.

The rain pools by his feet in front of him on the concrete doorsteps, and the stinging coldness of dripping water in his face makes him grip the leash tight until his nails dig into the flesh of his palm. Duchess doesn’t know any better, just preciously wags her tail with excitement regardless of the rain.

His therapist had taught him mindful meditation exercises to deal with this. $250 an hour for teaching him how to breathe and mentally list out things that made him think of home, and during the entire session instead of taking it in, he calculated in his head how 17,000 divided by 250 afforded him 68 sessions that were quickly eating into your already tight savings when he had to retake his helicopter licence (another one of his mistakes that you end up paying for).

How if he hadn’t given up his fifth of a share of $5,334,120 it would have been 4,267 sessions instead; and if Tom hadn’t been greedy. If Frankie hadn’t backed down on the runway, telling the man _there was no way in burning hell they were going to make it across the goddamned Andes,_ just like he _knew_ they wouldn’t, that he didn’t spend _four **fucking** years_ in intensive training as a pilot not to be trusted to do basic air freight calculations, then he could’ve bought a lifetime’s worth of therapy sessions for his whole military unit and _still_ have enough money left to pay off the mortgage to your house.

He still doesn’t know how to tell you. That his trigger happy finger set off a chain of events that left your best friend a widow. That he signed off a million dollars to an anonymous trust fund for Molly and Tess. Money he could have kept for you and Carmentéa’s future. Money that Molly didn’t even want to touch because she knows it has blood on it.

When he stood there over an absurdly sized conference table for only five people and a lawyer, instead of the six of them, pen in his hand staring at the legal papers, he knew that for the rest of his life this would always haunt him. In that moment, in his misguided pride he thought that by signing away the money, it would go some way to signing away the guilt as well.

_(It didn’t.)_

He hates therapy, but he has no other choice than to take it seriously, because he wants to stay here. Wants to get better. Can’t afford to make another mistake now, because you’ve already given him his second, and third chance and he doesn’t want to test if this is going to be his last.

He closes his eyes, taking a deep inhale through his nose, mentally counting to four, and then he holds the breath to a count of seven, before breathing out again.

_The colour of your eyes._

_The address of your home_ _together._

_Carmentéa’s middle names._

_He’s safe, he’s fine. He’s here, not there._

September is the rainy season, and so it shouldn’t surprise him when it continues to rain the next day and the day after, and in that entire week he’s barely held together by surface tension; the whole of him threatening to spill over the brim at any second.

He tries to stay away from Carmentéa, because he’d read in a baby book during your pregnancy that young toddlers are sensitive and pick up negative feelings and anxiety from the people near them, and he doesn’t want to poison her with his. _Fuck up the only thing he’s created that’s pure and good._

He keeps to himself in the garage, tinkering with one thing or the other: an old VHF receiver from the 60s he found at the flea market you used to go to on Sundays; Ironhead’s old bricked Atari; replacing the clutches on Molly’s car, _again_.

Frankie likes to fix things; it keeps his churning brain occupied, and he can block out the constant noise that grinds between his ears like the sound of force feeding glass to a sink disposal. When he gets to focus on something that requires careful attention, it thins it to a shrieking whistle. But most of all, sometimes it’s just nice to remind himself that he doesn’t only break things.

That week, you don’t say anything about his absence in the house. There’s a silver lining to you constantly avoiding to look him in the eyes that way. _Small mercies_. At least it means you won’t see that he’s unravelling at the seams when the two of you are confined under the same roof.

The nights are the worst. Trapped in his own head without even sleep to distract him. All he can hear is the rain. All he can feel is his cold soaked jeans weighing at his feet as he’s huddling up for warmth under the poor excuse of shelter of a tree in the jungle. Benny and Ironhead are sniping at each other like two catty cheerleaders arguing over who’s going to make prom queen. His anxiety is a slow, high-pitched hum that keeps him up. He can’t sleep until he’s so exhausted he just blacks out, and the next thing he knows, he’s awake and Duchess is scratching at the door for it to begin all over again.

On Thursday, he wakes up to the sound of rain but there’s no Duchess scratching at the door. Your side of the bed is cold and empty, and his first panicky instinct is that you finally took Carmentéa and the dog and left. The second thought is, _you’re right to leave him._

When he makes his way downstairs, you’re already in the kitchen preparing breakfast.

“It’s going to be raining all of next week,” you tell him. “I can take Duchess for her walks if you want to get Carmentéa dressed in the mornings instead.”

You don’t press, you don’t ask, you don’t force anything out of him. _You just know_ something is wrong, even without asking, and in all the big and small ways you can, you try to make life a little bit easier for him. It’s something no one has done for him before you, and no one will be doing after you either.

You don’t say anything more, and all he can do is quell the burning swelling in his throat as he awkwardly murmurs _thank you_ , when he really wants to tell you, _I love you_. But he doesn’t, because it’s not fair to put that burden on you.

For the briefest of moments, one that doesn’t last very long ( _they never do anymore_ ), you look up and you actually smile at him. It’s muted, and maybe it’s a little bit wistful, but it’s there, and it fucking blows his heart out. The fuse in his brain burning to a crisp as he just stands there like an idiot. He wants to reach out ( _but doesn’t)_. Wants to say something ( _but doesn’t_ ), and as always, the moment is gone much too soon and there’s nothing left in it except his regrets for the both of you.

Night comes and the rain is louder than ever. He tries not to grind his teeth. Tries to not vibrate from the tension that’s overtaken his limbs. Tries to quiet the loud thumping beat of his heart, so loud that he worries it might wake you in your sleep. He’s sweaty and disgusting, even as he’s lying still underneath the covers.

“Frankie?” Despite the hushed quietness of your voice, it still startles him. “Are you ok...?”

He feels the gentle comforting glide of your fingertips following the nostalgic trail of the freckles on his back, which you can’t possibly see through the t-shirt he’s wearing to sleep. It occurs to him that you must’ve memorised it from the sheer habit, from all the nights you’ve lulled him back to sleep like this over the years. Nights when he’d wake from nightmares and stare into the ceiling, catching his breath, until you’d turn around, half-asleep and drowsily pull him into the safe harbour that was being nestled and entangled between your thighs and arms.

You scoot a little bit closer to him in the bed now. “Do you need me to hold you; would that help?” you ask, and it makes him choke with a watery breath that he tries to swallow down deep into his chest.

He turns towards you in the darkness, and the weight of the bed shifts as you shuffle closer to him, your head resting on his pillow, your breath tickling against his face, a momentary ceasefire as the walls are lowered and he can feel the warm tip of your nose against his. It doesn’t matter that it’s pitch dark because this close he can make out the beautiful contours of your face that he just wants to reach out to touch and map out underneath his fingertips, _(but he doesn’t)_.

Instead he just lies there, still. Keeping his hands to his sides to resist the temptation to touch because he knows if he starts he’ll never stop. If he starts, he’ll lock his arms around your back, a hand on your shoulder to press his face deep into the crook of your neck until every inch of your skin is pressed so tight against his that all of him covers all of you, and that still wouldn’t be enough. If he starts, he’ll start hoping again. Foolish hopes like, _forgive me,_ and, _love me,_ that he knows he doesn’t deserve anymore, because the things you’ve given him are already stretching your capacity to love and forgive to its limits.

He knows this doesn’t mean you forgive him, that this is merely an act of compassion because you’re unable to stand how pathetic and pitiful he is. A grown man rendered nonfunctional by a little bit of rain. In the morning you’ll go back to not being able to look him in the eyes for longer than a few seconds at a time. But for now this is enough for him, more than he could ever wish for.

So he lies there, still for you, when you slide a leg between his and your limbs are entangled with his and he lets himself feel it, your warm comforting touch, the familiar sweet ache in his stomach as your fingers carefully comb through his hair and smooth it down. How the whole chaotic painful world that Frankie has learnt to live with fades away when he feels your fingertips against the crown of his head like this. The high pitch in his brain that is always churning, finally turning off, _silent_ , and his eyes flutter close into the calming blank space of darkness.

In your arms, he finds a little bit of respite, and Frankie sleeps, better than he has slept for a year. Better than he has any right to.


	4. Winter

The sound of children’s feet is often described as pitter patter, which you associated with quick light steps, but you had always thought barrelling was a much more apt description for Carmentéa. It was certainly true now as she was stampeding along, next to you by your feet, stopping only to fall over the carpet and pick herself and do it all over again, as you were folding away the laundry.

There’s a light polite knock on the open door frame as you look up and Frankie’s head pokes in through the bedroom door. “Do you know where my dress shoes are?”

You turn towards him, taken aback by his appearance. _Tidy._ Hair neatly combed back. A formal button up shirt that you can’t ever recall seeing on him clinging to his wide shoulders. Fitted trousers that hug closely to his hips and broad thighs. You feel like you’re staring at a stranger in front of you. That old age cliche of a tall dark handsome stranger. It takes you a handful of seconds to register that it's actually Frankie.

“They’re in the corner closet. What do you need them for?”

“I’m gonna wear them for the job interview, then afterwards, I could swing by and take you to dinner?”

“Dress shoes are a bit formal for Colleen’s, aren’t they?”

Shoving his hands into his pockets, he looks almost sheepish. “I thought we could go somewhere a bit nicer? If you want to.”

You say _yes, of course,_ even though you prefer the more humdrum option. Because Colleen’s is where you always end up going when you want to treat yourselves and you like clinging onto old reminders of better times. An old diner 20 minutes down the road that serves breakfast at all hours, where even though the coffee is shit, and so is more than half of the menu, they have the best biscuits and gravy for miles, served piping hot from the oven. The aging owner Colleen is always snarky to you, but sweet on Frankie, and he’ll always switch your plates when the food arrives at the table, because his portion will always have extra gravy that you like. You’ll look up from your plate, between an inhale of shoving food down your throat and Frankie will just be gazing at you fondly without looking away, and it would warm you inside out regardless of the season.

You look down at yourself now, high waisted jeans that definitely qualify as mom-jeans, a faded tee-shirt and your eyes are drawn to the large blot food stain that was permanently etched from where Carmentéa always burrows her head into your chest to sleep, and suddenly you truly feel the meaning of the word _homely_ shaming you.

“Do I need to change?”

He takes in your appearance before meeting your eyes, holding them for the first time in a long while without looking away.

“No, you look great,” he simply says and means it.

The way he looks at you pins your feet to the carpet, a gaze of someone who has seen the best and worst of you, and knows everything that you are. It drills into your chest and leaves you naked and bare to him in a way that you’re still not ready for, and you turn away completely until your back is to him.

You don’t even look up from the laundry basket until you hear him walk away.

“Don’t close the closet door, remember it only opens from inside,” you shout after him. There’s no answer, and from the sound of creaking stairs, you figure he’s already gone downstairs. Carmentéa is still practising sprints, and you see her do a tumble that almost transforms into a somersault. But before you drop everything in your arms to run to her, she’s already up on her feet again for the next round.

You should be grateful and appreciative that he’s trying. He’s interviewing for a position that would ground him from being in the air, but bring a comfortable income to your family so you could stop doing double shifts. He’s put on clothes that make him feel uncomfortable and ridiculous. He takes care of booking dating activities and new restaurants you haven’t been to every weekend because it’s what the therapist recommended for the two of you. It all helps.

But at the risk of sounding ungrateful. For all that Herculean effort, you’re constantly fighting the urge to tell him that this isn’t really what you wanted. You want him to be happy, and flying makes him happy. You want him to be happy, and you know that wearing a stiff shirt and a strangled tie that feels like a noose against his Adam’s apple ain’t it. Nor are the weekly assigned date nights that feel like pretending to play house together.

And it’s not that he doesn’t look handsome in a fitted shirt. _My god,_ _he does._ But when you close your eyes at night, you don’t think of Frankie in a suit and neatly combed back hair. You think of his hair tousled, pressed against the pillow with a drowsy smile on his lips. Your fingertips reaching under his loose fitted t-shirt worn soft with age, trailing the sparse hair you find there against the soft curve of his belly.

Stuffing a handful of underwear into the drawer carelessly, you unravel the whole careful system you have, and your eyes catch at the old envelope hidden in the very bottom of the divider that you usually ignore.

Your fingers trace the edges of faded yellow paper, marked with the military post office stamps, before you pull out the letter, immediately recognizing Frankie’s distinctive handwriting. It’s so neat and legible that, had it not been for the smeared ink smudges, you could have easily mistaken it for a printed font.

“ _Mi Alma._

_I couldn’t catch a wink of sleep last night. I may come back home sooner than planned with dishonorable discharge for strangling a fellow soldier in his bunkbed. Miller snores like a freight train with engine failure._

_It’s hell to be trapped inside your own head at night without the distraction of sleep. All I can see is you laying in bed underneath me. You on top of me. I want you wrapped around me, and my right hand is not a very convincing substitute on these lonely nights._

_Even on the nights I manage to sleep to the soundtrack of Miller’s rhinoceros snores, I wake up hard and aching for you._

_I think of our last night at the lakeside by the old quarry. You keeping me company in our sleeping tent. How good you were at keeping quiet for me. I think of how next time when I come home, I want to hear every single sound you make until you’re hoarse._

_I miss you._

_Tuyo siempre, Frankie”_

You stare at the letter as heat starts to prickle your cheeks at the memory. Frankie and you struggling for space in his cramped tent, with hushed moans and quiet grunts echoing in between the rustles of sleeping bags. One large hand clamped tight over your mouth as he pressed his cock into you, a slow aching fit. His hair still wet from the earlier midnight swim, slicked and curling on his forehead, his face pressed into the side of your neck as he kept whispering into your skin about _how fucking good you were being for him._

An urgent rush of need that refuses to be ignored grows inside you, and it makes you shove the letter back into the drawer with a quick slam, locking it away from yourself as you take several steps back. You close your eyes to block out the image, but it’s no use.

You can still feel the cold water droplets gathering by your collarbone, and the way Frankie lapped at it with a broad stripe of his warm tongue before his teeth marked your flesh with a bite. You had sobbed into his palm, trying not to scream from how thickly he filled you, struggling not to wake the others in the nearby tents.

You can’t stop thinking about the way his hips desperately ground into you, skin searingly hot against yours, and how in that moment you were sure that the only thing in this world worth anything to you was the sweet fulfilling stretch of Frankie’s cock as he rocked up into you.

And you can’t stop the way your heart knocks fast and loud against your chest, as that old intimate beat of attraction in your veins sings out to you that you still want him.

Dragging your hands across your face, you feel the incriminating heat underneath. You’re trying to rub and scrub it clean with a splash of cold water over the bathroom sink when you realize that there’s no sound of stomping footsteps next to you. Hasn’t been for a while now.

“Carmentéa?”

Worry then guilt eats into you, as you realize you lost her. The worst part is you don’t even know when she left your side. Was it before or after you got horny reading your own husband’s letter? _You’re such a ridiculous person. And now you’re a terrible mom to boot_. _Why are you like this?_

You keep calling for her, as you round the hallway, until you hear the muffled sound of Carmentéa’s bright laughter coming from the corner closet where the door has been shut.

_She’s locked herself inside._

That stupid door should have been fixed as soon as Carmentéa was born, but in your defence a lot of things happened in that first year that it got lost amongst other pressing priorities. And you hadn’t expected Carmentéa to be quite so steady on her feet, quite so fast from the time she started walking.

“Carmentéa! Open the door for me.”

There’s tittering excitement from the other side of the door that any other time you’d find adorable, but right now only causes agitation as she defiantly announces, **_no._**

“This isn’t a game sweetheart, open the door now.”

Frantically, you start knocking louder at the door and jiggle the handle more forcefully, trying to jimmy it open as all the worst case scenarios come rushing in. That shelf on the top that is resting on two screws, stacked with heavy books that could fall on her. The toxic cleaning supplies you’d stored away in the corner on the floor that she could get into. Even if you break the door down, you’d hurt her if she’s standing in front of it.

“What’s wrong?”

You jump in your skin and turn at the sound of Frankie behind you.

“She locked herself inside the closet.”

You’re so worked up you don’t even react to his hand coming to rest on the small of your back, shepherding you to stand behind him.

“It’s ok,” he assures you, “I’ve got it.”

Faced with a dilemma, Frankie’s first instinct is never to react with panic, even as anxiety and worry rages inside of him. It is like his brain kicks into gear, and time slows down for him, and he knows exactly what to do, exactly what needs to be done and executes it flawless before anyone else in the room even has the time to react. It is why he’s the one you want with you in the room when everything goes wrong.

Instead of panicking, instead of scolding her, Frankie simply hunches over to sit in front of the door, giving the door a light rap.

“Carmentéa, can I come in?”

It takes several long moments, before the door slants open, your daughter's mischievous grin peeking out as Frankie tenderly greets, _hola princesa._

With his split second reflexes, you know it would have taken very little effort for him to simply grip the door through the slanted opening, forcing it open, but he doesn’t and you’re mid-step to grabbing the door yourself, only for it to slam back shut to the chorus of giggles.

“Frankie,” you start, but he holds up his hand, stopping you mid-sentence. Unbothered, he merely knocked a second time, patiently waiting for her to open it again.

Brown eyes and cotton-soft curls, the same as her father’s, spied through the crack, as he greets “ _hello”_ again _, a_ nd then even quicker than last time it closed in his face.

Unable to wait anymore, you rush forward to tap on the door yourself, and Frankie curls his fingers around your wrist, searing hot, without him knowing it.

“You have to let her come out of the closet on her own, otherwise she’ll associate it as something bad. This is her home, she’s supposed to feel safe everywhere.”

All your worries melt away at that, knowing that he had in a brief moment assessed every angle and evaluated that this was the course of action and you trusted him implicitly and always, even with the most valuable thing you had in your life locked away from you on the other side of the door. Nodding at him, you take a step to the side next to him, and he leans forward, knuckles rapping against the door again.

You lose count of how many times the two of them do this: _knock — hello — slam. Knock — hello — slam._ Enough that it should have driven any adult man insane, until finally, _finally_ , Carmentéa is done having her fun, opens the door wide, and instead of closing it, climbs into her father’s lap, laying her mop of curls against his chest, tuckered out.

It makes for such a nostalgic picture and you remember that more than a year ago this was all that you had wanted. The wish to reenactment moments like this a million times over and how that was the very reason you had decided to stay in the first place.

He turns to you and sees you staring. Instead of looking away, his eyes meet yours, a soft if not slightly tired smile on his lips as the sole dimple on his right cheek deepens. The same stirring of that old memorable warmth for him crowds your chest, until it threatens to spill somewhere, _anywhere_. It’s there, overwhelming you with its suddenness, and you don’t know where to put it as you hear the loud pounding beat in your ears that you’re trying to ignore.

_You’re not ready yet._


	5. Spring

It’s one of those days, where everyday life is relentless and everything just happens at once. It’s Laundry, credit card bills, groceries, mopping up Duchess’ vomit after she’d gotten into the trash can. It’s scrambling to get Carmentéa dressed again after she’d kicked off all her clothes and ran buck naked across the hallway as Frankie tried to chase after her. It’s being half an hour late dropping her off with your mother so you could get to your assigned date night that the couple therapist had recommended. It’s forcing yourself to put on makeup and a dress even though both of you are much too exhausted to go anywhere and you just want to hide under the covers hoping tomorrow will be better.

It’s pitch black on the country road, and the evening breeze escapes through the open window on your side and makes your head lull to the shoulder of the carseat.

“Maybe we should go home,” Frankie says. “Let you get some sleep instead.”

Eyes slowly blinking open, you’re drawn to the bullseye tattoo between his thumb and index finger on the steering wheel. You want to trace it with your fingertips the way you used to until he’d look up and cover his hand over yours.

You drag your eyes away instead, looking at the shadowy outlines of trees whizzing past. “We should go. It’s what the therapist ordered.”

Frankie lets out a small huff of laughter, the sound of it deep and rumbly. So pleasant it was made to be nuzzled at. “It’s not homework, we’re allowed to not go if we don’t want to. We’re adults now.”

Still fuzzy with sleep, you dig your cheeks deeper into the shoulder pad of your seat with a drowsy yawn. “Frankie, if we stop doing things simply because we didn’t want to, life would look very different.”

There’s a beat of a silence that you don’t miss when he turns to look at you, the tension set in his jaw, the way the softness in his eyes hardens until it is set to stone that sobers you from sleep.

“What?” you ask him.

“Nothing.” He pulls his eyes back on the road, but the tension is still clearly there. “Forget it.”

You’ve stepped on a live wire you realize. You’re in the no man’s land that neither of you had dared to walk into and you, and your big clown shoes stepped right on top of a landmine because you couldn’t be bothered to look down properly. “I didn’t mean us—”

“I know.”

Silence fills the car again. Silence has a way of filling any and all spaces where the two of you are together by yourselves.

“Do you want me to drive us home?”

Irritation brews in you. A viscous oil back spill of resentfulness. He always does this. Puts the decision in your hands. And when it goes wrong. When things go bad. Then it’s on you and you can’t bear the thought of making decision after decision that at every turn seems to make the both of you so unhappy.

“What do _you_ want to do, Frankie?”

“I’m fine with either. Just let me know if you’re not up for it, and I can drive us home.”

“Don’t do that,” you snap, back upright in your seat. “Don’t put this on me. I’m asking you. What do _you_ want? Do _you_ want to go to dinner or do _you_ want to go home?”

He says your name with a heavy sigh like it is something to be carried, a blunt weight on his shoulders as he tries to march forwards, and meanwhile you are standing in the deep end of a pool of resentment unable to feel the bottom with your toes and too tired to keep kicking your legs to keep yourself afloat.

“I’m not trying to put it on you,” he says. “You’re tired, and I thought you could need some rest. If you’re telling me you’re not tired, I’m more than happy to go.”

 _Happy_ isn’t the word you’d use to describe either of you these days, and certainly not Frankie, and as you close your eyes to calm yourself you can hear it again, that loud insistent beating knock.

“Please stop putting every decision on me. Because I don’t know what to do when I make the wrong one and it leaves us both miserable and unhappy.”

“I’m not unhappy.”

“You’re not unhappy?” A shaky scoff crawls out of your throat at the falsity. “Is this the life of happiness you aspired to? A life where your daughter grows up with two parents who can barely stand to look at each other when they’re in the same room?”

For the first time, Frankie’s concentration on the road breaks as he swerves unsteadily around a particular sharp corner. “No, of course I don’t want that for Carmentéa. I don’t want that for us, I don’t want either of us to be unhappy, and I don’t want you to barely be able to look at me for more than five seconds at a time!”

“So what do you want then?”

His eyes turn to you, a bullet piercing gaze that shows you there are so many things he wants. You just don’t know what those things are anymore.

_You? Or a life without you._

His tongue swipes over his lip in frustration, before he turns his attention back on the road. He’s turned quiet on you again. Shoulders all twisted up until they’re bunched into one big tangled knot that you don’t know how to untangle anymore.

Sometimes you wonder if there’s been any progress at all. On some days it’s several steps forward, other days, two steps back. Sometimes you think you can see the finish line, and then you're dragged backwards, kicking and screaming against the asphalt with scraped knees, right back to the starting point and it is exhausting. Sometimes you don’t want to pick yourself up, you just want to stop.

“Frankie,” you’re surprised by your own voice breaking; how your throat can be dry when it feels flooded with water as you finally, _finally_ , after all this time, just ask him the question you should have asked him a year and a half ago. “Do you ever think we would’ve been better off if we divorced?”

The leather audibly creaks underneath his hands on the steering wheel. Eyes straight ahead. You can’t see him in the darkness even as you’re looking at him.

“Is that what _you_ want?” he asks.

Your mouth works, trying to answer him, but you never get the chance to.

There’s a flash of white blinding lights ahead, and when you snap your head to the road ahead, you see a large oncoming truck on the wrong side of the road, and you know that it is coming for you.

One leg instinctively kicks out, feeling for the brakes that are not even there. Eyes slamming shut as you brace yourself for the inevitable impact of a 14,000 pound truck.

You wait for it, the crush of metal cutting through, of smashed glass and seared skin. The collision of a truck with your side that will grind your bones and flesh to a pulp.

But it never comes. The car is immobile;and you think to yourself, _I must already be dead._

Then all you hear is Frankie’s steady, comforting voice in the empty darkness, “Are you okay?”

Everything is a gaussian blur when you blink your eyes open. Too bright. Too loud; lungs burning for air, unable to breathe. In the distorted fog, you only recognize Frankie.

He reaches over, his hand bridging the span of your jaw, and you lean into his touch, revelling at the comfort of the assuring warmth you find there.

“You’re not hurt. Take a slow breath with me ok?”

Frankie’s hand squeezes tight over yours, urging you to take a long inhale, and when he releases his firm grip, he tells you to slowly breathe out, and you do.

“What color are my eyes?”

You blink, not understanding, “Wha—?

“What color are my eyes, baby?”

The gentle endearment in that soothing husk centers you, your eyes snapping to his, focusing on the deep brownness you find there. You don’t remember how long it’s been since the last time he called you that.

“Brown.”

There’s a warm smile there that fills you with such assurance that when you take your next breath, the oxygen fills a little bit easier.

“What’s our address?”

“14 Columbia Avenue.”

The brightness dims, and everything turns a little bit calmer and quieter, and slowly, ever so slowly, as you come to, you realize it's because at some point Frankie must have turned off the radio and the overhead lights in the car, all without you even noticing.

“Are we—” Taking in your surroundings, there does not seem to be any damage to the car. The roof hasn’t caved in and the front windscreen remains uncracked. “Did we crash?”

“No. It’s fine,” Frankie tells you in calm, short sentences. “A truck swerved too close onto our side.” His hand squeezes yours, then releases. _Breathe in. Breathe out_.

“I drove us down the side of the road to avoid contact. We’re fine. Only clipped the side-view mirror.”

He lets go for a brief moment to take off his old worn jacket, and wraps it around your shoulders, before returning his hands to you, one in your hand, the other gently cupping your cheek with an immeasurable calm that sinks into you.

Instinctively you pull it up until the collar brushes against the tip of your nose. It smells rich, earthy and slightly sweet, the way old fine leather does, and like something all too familiar that is distinctly Frankie. Traces of his aftershave that always linger, and a faint scent you never know if it’s supposed to be pine or some hipster forest blend. Warmth zips through your chest at the comforting scent that makes it a little easier to breathe just on the side of enough to pull you back from completely spiralling.

“You feel better?”

His hands are so large that the tip of his fingers are cupping the back of your neck, bridging across your jaw to where his thumb brushes against the apple of your cheeks, tantalizing strokes that you feel to your shivering bones with a racing heart.

“Let me know when you’re ready to start driving home, ok? Take all the time you need.”

There’s the tender press of his lips to your forehead that lingers pleasantly, then his forehead comes to rest on yours, the weight of it reassuring you that you are going to be ok so long as he’s here. It makes every inch of you feel safe and protected. Trust that comes with time, earned over years by constantly having proven that he is a safe place for you to rest your worries. A safe place you don’t want to lose.

Gripping your fingers into the worn cotton of his shirt, you tug him down closer, your lips grazing against that fine scratch of silver flecks mixed with brown scruff on his jaw, and you swear you hear his breath catch just as you press your lips to his.

But he doesn’t kiss you back. Unresponsive. Lips hauntingly still against you as you can feel him stiffen up in rejection to your advances. It’s the longest second in your life, and it seems to stretch for an eternity as a horrible realisation dawns on you.

 _Frankie doesn’t want you_ , and it’s much too late for this reconciliation that you were pathetically clasping for. Because you do not get to push away someone who loves you, every day for over a year, and expect his love to remain unwavering at the end of that tunnel.

A fissure infects your chest. Sharp and painful, the sensation of wading your ribcage through a throng of nettles. Your throat clamps up, the corners of your eyelids stinging as you tell yourself, _for fuck’s sake don’t cry_.

Then there’s a clasp of metal that belatedly you recognize is the seat belt unbuckling. Frankie surges forward, lips crashing against yours, a brutal charge that takes you unawares, and you taste the desperation, the pent up anxiety warring inside him as his tongue slips into your mouth with a low pained grunt.

And despite the rushedness, the clumsy force of it, your nerves sing with the relief that floods your veins at the familiar taste of him.

Pushing you back as he moves forward in the eagerness of it all. The force of it knocks your head against the ledge of the window, and you hear it more than you feel the collision, not even registering the blunt pain until you hear Frankie’s panic.

“Fuck! Sorry.” His hand immediately comes to cradle the back of your head to shield it from further damage and bruises.

“It’s ok,” you assure him, and it’s so much more than ok, when he’s this close to you. “Don’t stop.” You press forward until your lips meet again.

This time it’s slower. Slow, and indulgent that is somehow no less urgent and demanding as he’s coaxing your mouth open to him with his tongue, licking into you with a greedy moan that reverberates through your whole being.

It’s a bit awkward, the gearstick uncomfortably jabbing into the side of your hip. But even in the cramped space of your car, somehow you manage to mold Frankie’s long torso along the jagged edges of you, and you feel like you’re finally fitting the pieces together.

“Querida, you’re so soft.Feel so good. Jesus Christ, I missed touching you.”

It’s so stupid, it almost makes you want to cry. Now, when you hear the hushed pleas of him against the shell of your ear, it is so obvious just how unwavering he is in his affection. How patiently he’s waited for you to be ready for him again. You just refused to hear and see it.

His lips pull away from you, mouthing at your ear. “Are you sure this is what you want..?” Frankie asks, the lingering trace of doubt that you might change your mind still there; worried you’d bite his hand if he so much as reached for you.

Taking his hand in yours, you guide it down between your legs, beneath your dress, skirting the edge of your underwear until he feels the damp spot outside of them. “Do you feel that,” you ask him, “just how much I want you?”

His pupils widen, a low feral moan and you think you can see the moment that his mind snaps into a different setting, the way that soft brown gaze darkens impossible deep.

“Get in the backseat.” It’s not an ask, _not a plea_ , the impossible low edge borders on a command. Gone is the hesitation, the cautiousness in him that he always practised around you nowadays. The treading around eggshells, replaced by a raw instinct of want.

He retreats from you, and gets out of the car from his side of the seat as you quickly climb into the back with clumsy anticipation when the passenger-side door flings open and he’s on you again. Mouth hot and urgent against the curve of your shoulder. The blunt sharp sting of his teeth bares down and you feel a rush of slick coating your inner thighs at the thought of him leaving marks, visible long after this moment.

“I want you any way you’ll let me have you.” He leans down, capturing your mouth in another consuming kiss as his one hand cups your jaw, the other dragging you closer to him by the waist. The hard outline confined beneath rough denim, grinding up against your thigh, causing ache and need to furl hot in your stomach.

You feel the fingertip ghosting over your clothed clit, separated only by a thin layer of cotton. He strokes over it, again and again and has you twitching in need of him at the confident and practised touch. Your leg anchors around his hips for leverage to arch yourself closer to him when he pins you back down against the seat, and you’ve never been more grateful that you’d left the baby seat at your mom’s.

The calloused warmth of his palm catches against your thigh as he bunches the skirt to the side of your hips. Then his hand rests flat against the soft curve of your stomach, gently pressing down. The weight of his palm, heavy, in the maddening downward slide, down—down, until his hand skim past the edges of your underwear between your legs, letting you buck up and grind against the heel of his hand for relief as you are coating him in your slickness.

“Do you know how much I’ve missed being inside you? That I touch myself when you’ve gone to sleep, thinking about you? You’re so close to me, and I can’t touch you, it drives me insane. It’s all I want, to make you feel so fucking good. To make you come hard, until you can’t think or speak anymore, then do it _over and over again._ ”

Your eyes are still on him, at the first nostalgic touch of his fingertips at your entrance, gathering your slick with a steady stroke to your clit in a lingering swirl. Calloused fingers that draw a teasing slide along your pussylips before slipping inside of you.

A pitched cry escapes from you, and your fingers bunch into his shirt at the thick fullness in you. “Me—Me too,” you manage, “I touched myself thinking about you as well.”

“Fuck” he grits out. “Tell me what you thought about.” His voice rasps against your skin like sandpaper, low and warm.

It’s hard to speak when his fingers are coaxing you in an obliging rhythm that is so much better than the countless nights of you trying to imitate his fingers with your own, and you barely manage to gasp out the next words. “You— Your hands.”

His fingers press deeper inside you, and you let out an embarrassingly sharp gasp, grabbing at his wrist, trying to make him ease up so you can form a proper sentence, but they won’t budge, and then he has the audacity to ask you, “How did you think of them when you touch yourself?”

“Wa—wasn’t enough. _Shit— Frankie._ Nee—needed you to help.”

“Help like this, baby?” He curls his fingers inside of you, and everything inside you feels bigger and deeper. Bright tingles that spark through the whole of your spine. You’re so tightly coiled into yourself, you're scared you might burst open. It’s so good and it’s _too much_ and _fuck_ , just about the only thing you can do is close your eyes just to stay grounded.

“Don’t.” He bites out. You’re confused by that until Frankie curves his hand around your jaw and tilts your face closer. “ _Querida_ ” he begs, and while his voice is husky and low, there’s that pitch of anxiety entering it. “Please, baby. Please don’t close your eyes. I need you to look at me.”

Opening your eyes, you see the fear in him that you’re trying to shut him out again, and it breaks your heart when you realize how far you’ve broken this man in the past year and a half that so little can crumble him so fast.

Cupping his face in your hand, you draw him to your lips, “I’m looking at you, baby,” pressing a tender kiss there, shuddering into his mouth.

Maybe it’s because it’s been so long, maybe it’s because it’s Frankie in the flesh instead of hushed fantasies in the darkness when you’re alone, but you are so worked up that you’re already close. A needy flare of heat blazes in your stomach, and all you can concentrate on is how close he finally is to you. The closeness of his body pressed up against you; his rasping voice; the warm scent that makes you think of home.

The heel of his hand grinds down, and that warm perfect pressure is exactly what you need. Your orgasm pours over your body in waves and waves, legs drawing up in uncontrollable spasms, trying to ride out the sensation.

“That’s my girl,” he praises as he draws you into his arms and you feel blissed out when you hear him use his old phrase that makes everything seem alright in the world in this contained second of closed off space.

When your breath steadies, Frankie moves off of you, and gently lifts your back against the backrest until you’re sitting upright. His lips kiss a path down your throat, collarbone and stomach, before he settles between your legs, his knees digging into the carpet of the floor, in a position you both know is going to be pure murder on his poor back.

“I want to make you come on my tongue first.” Placing a kiss on the inside of your thigh, his patchy beard that never fully grows in, scrapes against the inside of your thigh, and you’re pushing at his shoulder with the heel of your hand to remind him that you're still sensitive. He doesn’t seem to pay it any attention as his hand curls around your thigh, hiking them over his shoulders. Then his mouth is pressed hot and wet on your folds, and his tongue swipes over your entrance, a light teasing touch that has you thrusting your hips up to him.

The bump of his nose nudging your clit as he licks into you has you shakily moaning, and he gathers your arousal on his diligent tongue. You can’t help but grind up against his face, until Frankie will have none of it and holds you back down against the carseat by your hips, setting a slow but fervid pace at his control as his tongue works into you.

“Oh, _fuck…_ ,” you're trembling so hard your voice vibrates.

Dragging you closer to his mouth by your thighs, he spits onto your pussy, the sound piercing in its sharpness in the enclosed space. Frankie watches, mesmerised, as his saliva drips a glistening path down to your entrance, and groans quietly, tongue swiping at the lewd wetness of it before it touches the car seat. The eagerness of his mouth on you, the way he’s grinding into the car seat for relief, it completely unravels you until it has you pushing yourself into his mouth, trying to chase the sensation of his nose nuzzling into your clit.

It’s absolute bliss, the way he has your back pressed with nowhere to go except closer to him, the way your entire world narrows down to a pinpoint of the sound of your sobbing breaths, and the dependable firmness of his sturdy back when your heels dig into his broad shoulders, while Frankie soothes you with kisses and the softness of his tongue.

“Fuck, Frankie,” you whine. “ _fuckdon’tstoppleaserightthere”_.

It’s all too much, and you're being pulled under by it, drowning in sensations. You need to pull up above the surface to breathe again, or you think you're going to die in the best possible way. You’re grabbing at Frankie's hand like he’s your life preserver, his longer fingers woven between yours, squeezing them against your hip bone, reassuring you, _he’s right here_.

When you come again, warmth floods your veins, touching every part of your body, thrumming through every nerve and cell as it washes over you. Everything else around you dissipates into a low soothing hum of the man who loves you, who’s on his knees on the floor, showing you just how much. The only thing that matters anymore is how everything in you tingles pleasantly. It lingers long after it’s over, and you can still feel it in the tip of your fingers and in the curl of your toes as you come down on Frankie’s tongue.

“Good?” Frankie asks, which is such a redundant question. It’s not like he doesn’t have eyes to see the state he’s left you in.

Too blissed out to put up a fight, you nod. “So fucking good,” and Frankie lights up with a smile so sincere, it fills your chest with something so warm, you forget any sense of self-preservation. Instead you yank him up by his hair, like it’s a collar, to kiss you, and Frankie is so dutiful he leans up and kisses you back.

It is enough to make you giddy when he still tastes of you, and a flutter of bright laughter rushes past your lips. His cheeks are flushed rosy, upper and bottom lips glistening with you, as he asks you with breathless enthusiasm, “Do you want to keep going?”

You barely finish nodding before he eagerly kicks off his jeans, trying to keep the awkward fumbling to a minimum in the cramped space with the front seat pushing uncomfortably against his back, and then his hot skin is pressing up against yours. The bare contact is so gratifying, you nuzzle your face into his warm neck to savor it.

Frankie groans as he frees his cock from his underwear, rearranging the both of you with an ease of strength that always surprises you. Him sitting up against the backseat, fitting you over him as you straddle the sides of his slim hips. “I want you to ride me,” he pleads with a husky murmur. “Querida, want you to use me until you make yourself come on my cock. I want you to take what you need from me, ok baby?”

Trying to rise to your knees, the exertion has you faltering, feeling the way your legs wobble from underneath your weight, still numb from the overload of sensation.

“Fuck Frankie, I— I can’t.”

There’s an ugly grimace filled with worry that bleeds onto his entire face, and you realize he’s terrified that you changed your mind again.

“I came so hard I can’t feel my legs.”

He blinks. Eyes blank until comprehension overtakes him. A soft smile blooms on his face, and it takes years off of him, endearing to a fault, and even in the total darkness of the car, it seems to light up everything. You are so _hopelessly_ gone for this man.

“Let me help you, baby.” His hands come to rest on your bum, fingers splayed wide, his palm carrying your weight as he lines himself up below you. Then he cants his hips up towards you, and you can feel the rigid shape of his cock, already slippery and wet from the precum that glistens there, rubbing up against your folds, soaking himself in your wetness without entering you. You can trace every ridge and vein with his lazy indulgent thrusts. Thrusts that you grind down on in kind, with what little strength you have left in you, thighs trembling from exhaustion.

The wet slickness as it drags across your sex is so depraved that if Frankie doesn’t stop you're going to fuck yourself to a third orgasm against his cock before he’s even inside of you. “Does that help?” he asks with the slightest hint of a tease in that boyish grin of his.

He thinks he’s being _real_ cute. “Don’t be a fucking tease,” you chastise with a tug of his hair, just on the side of sharp, and there’s a breathless huff of laughter as he whispers soft endearments and apologies in your ears.

His hand reaches between you, notching his cock at your entrance. You can’t think anymore when you feel the wide tip slowly push inside you with a blissful stretch that throbs hot and white inside. Sliding further still until your thighs and the full weight of you are resting completely on him, and there’s a sharp inhale from you both at just how deeply inside you he is embedded right now.

He mouths kisses along your jawline, soft and exploratory until he finds your mouth again, kissing you again and again, as his hands grab hold of the underside of your thighs, drawing you up; baring you down on him and grinding you further down on him, before releasing you and doing it all over again.

“How does that feel?” A small soft grunt escapes his throat. “Good?” He pulls out of you almost entirely, only the solid tip of him resting inside you. The slow thick drag makes you aware of each ample inch, makes you forget how to breathe, and from the choked breath of him, you think it’s the same for him.

Praise spills from your mouth, about _just how_ _good he feels, how good he’s being, how he is everything,_ because you know it’s Frankie’s favourite thing in the world, and you want to make him feel good too. You know you succeed when you feel how his grip tightens on you; the way he inhales sharply like he’s lost his ability to speak coherently.

“God, you’re fucking killing me,” he murmurs, brushing his lip over your shoulder with remarkable restraint.

His hips come to a slowing halt, Frankie pants heavily, his forehead resting against your collarbone and a pinched crease appears between his brows with pained concentration.

“Frankie, you ok?”

“Yeah, just give me a second.” He hugs you closer to him with a shaking breath. It’s difficult not to take that as a compliment, to have a man you’ve been with for over a decade so affected by you as if it’s his very first time with you. You’re smiling so widely your cheeks almost hurt as you cup his cheeks, slanting your mouth over his, treasuring the slow pull of his lips against yours while he’s inside of you. Then Frankie opens his eyes and just looks at you, brown eyes filled with unguarded warmth.

 _There you are_ , you almost want to tell him, _welcome home_.

Leaning forward, you roll your hips into him, hands braced over the lean muscles of his thighs, appreciatively. A long, filling stroke inside you, before dropping back down to the beautiful sound of Frankie’s strangled moans as you build up the devastating rhythm of his hips meeting yours at every downstroke.

“Querida, you close?” It’s a rasped ask, and his lips fall to your breast, to the spot right above where your heart is thumping hard and fast. “Think you can come for me again?”

Every muscle burns achingly sweet, and you don’t even know if you can anymore, but you want to pamper him, make that glint in his eyes stay for as long as you can. You nod, and it’s all the confirmation Frankie needs to plant his feet firm on the carpet for leverage and thrust up against you, making you cling onto his shoulders from the force of him. A strength, he so rarely uses, that comes so easy to him, that he tries to constantly rein in except for these rare moments only you are privy to.

The damp curls from his lower stomach, leading to where you are joined glistens with your arousal as you rock your hips over him again and again. It’s becoming impossible to have a single coherent thought anymore. There’s only the sensation of Frankie completely filling you, the hard thickness of him, and how much you’ve missed this as it takes away the aching emptiness inside you. How comforting it is to let yourself be so vulnerable that you allow another person to consume you in this way, to let yourself take and be taken, all in the conciliatory thrusts of his hips and yours.

It’s possibly the most beautiful thing you’ve seen when Frankie throws his head back against the headrest, lips slightly parted, his lean throat bared to you, looking every bit as wrecked as you feel. Legs trembling, he starts to tense in that all too familiar way underneath you. You recognize the strained inhale and hiss of breath, as he stops thrusting, trying to hold back. He grips at you, in an attempt to beg you to still, to let him recover. “Fuck! Baby, stop—stop,” he pleads; practically whimpering and it’s your favourite little sound in the world.

“Francisco, please. Don’t hold back, I want you to come inside me,” at the sound of his full name passing your lips, his hand curls impossibly tight into your hips, until it’s a sharp pinch of the already tender flesh, forgetting himself in you. A strained whine that escapes from deep in his chest, as one arm locks tightly around your back, pushing you flush up against him when he ruts into you sharply, up and into you as far as he can.

You feel it as he comes, a shattered sob muffled against your neck, hips pressed impossibly deep into you, the thick pulses as he spills inside of you, face pressed into the valley of your breasts, and all you can do is hold him against you as he quivers and shakes in your arms.

Out of breath. _Spent._ The numbing novocaine of adrenaline starts to leave your system as exhaustion enters instead, and you strain to lift your head to seek his lips again. It catches you by surprise, when you see the flash of disappointment in his eyes and before he even says the words you know what’s bothering him.

“You didn’t come.”

Misguided pride that he came before you did, as if he has no short term memory and has already forgotten that he’d rendered you into a state where your legs had gone numb from how hard you’ve come.

“Frankie, it’s okay—” you start, cupping his flushed cheeks, as you kiss the tip of his nose, “—I already—”

“Stay,” Frankie interrupts with a growl as he guides you back down, until you’re lying down pressed against the seat cushion, and then he slides down between your legs again, his knees digging into the car seat. He spreads your thighs over his shoulder, until his mouth is within reach of your cunt again. Sloppy kisses, with such eagerness it’s enough to make a grown man blush. Tasting his cum and yours on his tongue, creamy and warm, as he cleans the mess he’s made of you.

“Fuck! Frankie— are you fucking serious?” One of your legs kicks out as every nerve protests the relentless attention, and he has to hold onto your thigh, pressing it down against your chest to make sure he doesn’t get kicked in the face as he continues. He hums, low and content, and you can feel it deep within you.

“Frankie, it’s too much…” your heels dig into his back, bucking further into his mouth as he devours you hungrily with his tongue.

“It’s ok. I’ve got you,” he murmurs against your skin, caressing your thigh with a soothing hand to bring you down as you’re shaking all over. Turning his head, he places a far too chaste kiss on your knee, a mockery of what he’s actually doing to you right now, if he wasn’t so sincere. 

Bending down again, lips barely brushing against your folds; he presses a plush kiss on your clit, tonguing the overwrought nerves, and you roll your hips up against his mouth again and again, _using_ his mouth to make yourself come. A moan breaks from him, and he grabs at the side of your thighs, fingers denting into the flesh and lifts you closer to his face until you’re pressed tightly against his flushed cheeks.

A whimper is forced out of you, one hand weaving into his dampened curls and fisting them so tightly it must hurt, and Frankie just groans keenly at the sensation, the gorgeous, eager sounds of it reverberating against you.

You need the closeness of him even if he isn’t inside you as you come this time. The reassuring weight of his chest pressed up against yours, his eyes looking into yours, his lips on yours. After so much time of being separated from him, you _just want him_ , all of him, as much as you can have.

“Please.”

“Please what, _querida_?”

If you had any cognitive functions left for things other than chasing the deep arousal burning in your stomach, you imagine you might have been able to say something a bit more coherent. Instead, you’re whining _“need you”_ and “ _please”_ over and over again which only has Frankie’s brow raising in confusion. It’s not until he feels your fingers curl around the fistful of hair, pulling him up towards you that he finally understands what you want.

Frankie grunts as he drags himself away from your pussy and climbs up to kiss you, tongue melding against yours, until you can taste the lingering sweet tartness of your mingled orgasms on his tongue. His thumb replaces his tongue on your clit, rubbing slow aching circles that have you bucking sharply into his touch.

“You have me,” Frankie murmurs into your mouth, before sealing your mouth with another kiss. “You have all of me.” 

_Always have. Always will._

Your thighs tremble, spine trying to arch, but your limbs are so spent that you are struggling to keep yourself upright. Frankie holds you by the small of your back, carrying and supporting what you’re unable to on your own. “ _I’m yours,_ ” he whispers, and when you come again it’s with his lips on yours, allowing him to swallow every sound, worry and doubt from you.

Everything blanks out and you stop hearing sounds as if all your senses disappear. The last functioning brain cell thinks that you might be having a seizure or a stroke, but in all honesty you can’t even remember what either of those things are anymore. Then the light of the last brain cell goes out. Endorphins flood your brain and trickle down your shoulder to your chest and pools at your stomach unwinding every tiny muscle in its path. You vaguely register that your legs are shaking. Your toes are curling, and you're digging into the coarse fabric of the carseat so that you don't fall off from the edge of the world that you're precariously balancing on.

In its wake, you're left in a dreamlike state. You can’t feel your legs. Your face prickles, nose tingling. Your head is completely empty and yet you feel full to the brim. Everything is quiet and you can’t even hear yourself breathe. Then in its own good time, your systems flicker back to life. You become aware of the weight of Frankie pressed up against you and unwind your arms so that he can entangle his long limbs between yours, face nestling into the nook of your collarbone as you’re both trying to catch your breath.

It’s an old instinct brought back to life that makes your nails start to gently thread through the thick, tangled locks, and you can feel him shiver against you at the attention. His lips are pressed against your damp skin, and you think you hear him tell you something, but it’s so quiet that you have to ask him to repeat himself.

“Us,” he murmurs into you, and you catch the familiar scratch of his scruff against your chest, the fine scraping comfort of it. “That’s what I want.”

A warmth unfurls in your chest, and there’s a pleasant ache that stings behind your eyelids. “Me too.”

It’s the first time in a long while, much longer than you want to admit, as you’re tracing the fine hairs on the nape of his neck that you catch yourself thinking, _I love you_. You don’t say it out loud, so you can’t blame Frankie for not responding with, _I love you too_. But you can feel it in the steady beat of his heart through your own chest, the polite knock on the door, waiting patiently to be let in and you think you’re finally ready now. And even though you don’t say it, even though neither of you say another word as he lies with his weight on top of you, the soft overgrown curls tickling your throat, this is enough for you.

_This is enough for now._

The rest will come with time...


End file.
